Paxus's blog

Things look bad.  We are at 400 ppm carbon in the atmosphere.  The Syrian civil war hurls clusters of lit matches into the tinder box of the Middle East.  And fear of terrorism in the US allows cities to be shut down while the police search for a crazed teenager.

But despite this, and many more depressing examples, there are compelling cases to be made to be hopeful.  Especially, if that hopefulness gets you off your chair and into action.  The case for hope is well made by Rebecca Solnit, who is the sister of my dear friend and activist titan Davd Solnit.

In her new book Too Soon to Tell, the Case for Hope she makes the following point.

Reblogged from Running in ZK:

I moved to Twin Oaks about 12 years ago, and about four years in, it became apparent to me that I was going to be a parent (the rapidly swelling midsection of my partner helped to tip me off).  So I figured, as long as I was going to be raising a kid or two on the farm, they might as well be farm kids.  

Not all reactors are created equal.  In the global fight against nuclear power, there are some especially dangerous reactor types which clean energy activists take unusual pleasure in shutting down.  I remember the day (in June of 1997) i heard that the French SuperFenix breeder reactor was going to be shut down permanently.  I whooped so loud the folks in the WISE office all looked at me funny.

Monju – It took a fault line and 3 meltdowns to kill it

It looks like it will be time for another loud noise soon.  Japan’s Monju breeder reactor is sitting on top of an active fault line and this plus the countries new more strict nuclear regulator plus the unusually poor management of the plant, might just be enough to shut it down.

I have been a terrible mood for the last few days, which i will write about in a another post.  But this article on Buycott really made me smile.  The short version is this app (written by a lone 26 year old over the last 16 months) has the capacity to scan a bar code on something you are thinking of buying with your cell phone and see the corporate lineage of what you are considering buying.

This answers the question, which has been asked recently “How do i boycott the Koch Brothers or Monsanto?”

partial display of buycott screen example.

What is exciting (but potentially deceptive) is that this app reached number 10 in the downloads nationally within hours of it being released (tho they had to ultimately pull the droid version because of some bug).  The Forbes article points out that for some things (like conventional breakfast) nasty corporate domination as set in, in a way which will make it difficult to have any conventional breakfast.

Reblogged from Running in ZK:

Twice now I've scheduled time to dehorn the newest round of calves (we cauterize them).  Both times, Mushroom has wrangled them and held them down while I give lidocaine injections (which is rather stressful, really).  And then!  Ugh!  And then we call it off.

The first time, the vet showed up.  I had called her earlier in the day, and she showed up when she could without  a callback. 

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One of the pieces of community life i dont touch, but i appreciate those who do. A story of when the dairy program gets rough.

What is especially satisfying it to bump into an organizer who has complimentary skill sets with another organizer.  So it is with Irena at Acorn.  She is good at staying on task, definitely one of my weaknesses.  We work together on several things, the Communities Conference, the mechanics of the Seed business and most recently on the UVa dumpster dive.

Irena kept pushing me to work with the gal who runs the sustainability program for UVa, and thus got us pre-qualified for Chuck It for Charity, which is UVa’s answer to the growing dumpster diving “problem” that they face at the end of the academic year.  But to understand this “problem” you need some back ground.

All the attire, courtesy of UVa dumpsters.

UVa is a large affluent school in Charlottesville, the nearest big city to Twin Oaks and Acorn.  The academic calendar is design so that the last day of exams is the day before all the students need to be out of their dorm rooms.  So of course all of the students carefully manage their time so that they get their studying done for their exams early enough so they can pack all their stuff in time for the move out deadline.  And if you believe this, you apparently never went to college.

Reblogged from Running in ZK:

So, you know the deal, we get labor credits for all of the "commune useful" things we do, one hour of credit for every hour worked, all that good stuff.  Some of what I do definitely feels like work.  Indexing feels like work, especially on a sunny spring day.  Gardening, when it's unpleasantly cold or hot, feels like work.  Loading the tofu truck feels like work.  

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Ezra talks about the curious nature of work on the commune, and how sometimes it feels real (as in difficult and potentially undesirable) and other times it feels great (like when he gets to grill meat). Also details of how the Twin Oaks grilling situation has improved over the last year.

i missed the Dominion Resources shareholder meeting this year after having attended faithfully every year for perhaps half a dozen.  Perhaps CEO Tom Farrell missed my annoying questions about how the utility which i own two shares of continues to waste money on plans for another reactor at North Anna, which will likely never be built.

I was not able to be there to gloat over the fact that Dominion was forced this month to close the Kewaunee reactor in Wisconsin. i would be gloating for as the NY Times wrote about this plants closure:

The decision was viewed as an early sign that the wave of retirements of old generating stations across the Midwest is now stretching from the coal industry into nuclear power, driven by slack demand for energy and the low price of natural gas.

Also in this NYT article Dominion’s Farrell said of the closure of the plant.

“This decision was based purely on economics.”

Reblogged from Running in ZK:

Within four months of moving here, I became manager of the dairy program at Twin Oaks.   I have no prior experience in animal care, no prior experience with farm work in general, and really, no prior experience with physical work of any kind.  I was a computer programmer prior to moving here, for god's sake.

I think I just appear competent, and…

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How to go from being a IT person to being a farmer, in one hard lesson.

Reblogged from Running in ZK:

After you become a full member at Twin Oaks, you can take up to a year long leave of absence (which we call a PAL) and return without having to do the visiting process over again. Basically, you drop your membership status for the time you are away, and you return as full member with your previous labor balance intact. If you have lived at Twin Oaks for three or more years, you have the right to return to the bedroom you were living in before you went on PAL.

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There is a new blog in town called Running in ZK. Here is one of the earlier articles by returning member Rayne on her experience landing in a new room. If you are interested in the insiders view of Twin Oaks, you should follow RunningInZK.wordpress.org

The talented and lovely Tikva has started a comic which is largely about polyamory.

poly means more processing

Tikva and i lived at Twin Oaks together some years back

her talents are not limited to art stuff

Of course poly folks are our own best critics

guilty

Tikva is telegenic – making for great blog material.

how many times have i heard this …

i recruited her perhaps a decade back on the Harvard Yard, she was a shooting star

In hopes of starting a new community, i have largely dropped out of the general management of the Twin Oaks Hammocks business.  i do continue to do some work with Hawina and Dawn and Gordon mostly on retail marketing of our website (TwinOaksHammocks.com).

We are exploring discount codes to find out which advertising we are using works.  And i am pleased to announce that this blog has it’s own discount code.  When you buy a hammock, before you check out if you enter the discount code PAXSBLOG you will get 10% off, which is our deepest retail discount and cheaper than you are going to find these hammocks anywhere.

three lovely unrelated people, presumed to be a family by most viewers

But if you want to win your hammock instead of buying it, you can enter one of our two Fathers Day competitions.  Before you get your panties in a twist, we have defined father so broadly that a 3 year old girl could qualify as a deserving dad.  Here is the link to the 500 word essay contest or the 2 minute video contest

Spring is here, relax a bit and enjoying it.

i check my blog statistics regularly.  Which generates far more questions than answers for me:

• Why do i have clusters of readers in Pakistan and in the Philippines?
• Why do i get so many people finding the blog thru image searches?
• Why are there some many people who found me by searching for just “Red“

So the other day i come in to look at traffic, which has been a bit down recently and i see that there are over 2000 hits for the day on an old post (which i might get 400 or 500 on a popular post most days).  And as i look more carefully, these are all coming in thru an image search for “Bart Map and Schedule”. And when i check further, completely inexplicably to me this image which i put up in that post

How did this end up as number 1 in yahoo.images?

is now ranked number one on Yahoo Images if you search for “Bart Map and Schedule”.  And almost as quickly as it came up, the traffic from this vanished in the days following this promotion. The image remains in its top ranked position, but the traffic spike abated.

This is an image i stole from the regular BART site, as i presume hundreds of other people have.  But for mysterious reasons i have been promoted to this top spot.

i have long been slightly on the fence about going barefoot.  i definitely like the way it feels and i also appreciate the foot protection and speed afforded by shoes.  Today i fell off the fence.

“You know that there are studies showing there is a preventative  effect on Alzheimer’s and other aliments by going barefoot.” Feonix said.

Feonix does yoga int he shadow of the Tapan Zee Bridge

And i saw my mind decisively shift.  Even if there was only a small chance that there were significant health benefits from walking barefoot more often, i live in places where i can often easily be barefoot.  And on this day i was working at a craft fair on the beautiful Lyndhurst estate outside New York City, and i kicke doff my shoes.  i carried them with me some, where they made occasionally convient detached pockets, but mostly this afternoon i was bare foot on grass.    More generally on the commune it is fairly acceptable and accessible to be mostly barefoot, Rowan has modeled this behavior for his full 17 years of life.

Am i sure this is better for me? No.

The first time i played pick up ultimate Frisbee i was introduced to a new way to select teams, for the many one-on-one sports out there.  As we gathered as a group someone said “find someone of about your ability and pair up with them.  Everybody on the left is on this team the rest are on the other.” It was fast, it felt fair and it was completely novel to me.

I selected my fine friend Rabbit as my partner, not so much because we were the same ability, but rather because i knew him.  This was a tremendous mistake.  Rabbit could out play me in almost all aspects of ultimate.  The afternoon was frustrating and exhausting.  And what was clear was this was my choice.  Demonstrating that the system was also self correcting, since i would not repeat this mistake.

I thought to myself afterwards, why dont we select all teams this way?  It seems to be better in every way.  I mentioned this to a couple of players who were often selected as captains.  They did not see a reason to change from the existing system which rewarded their talents.  They talked about team work and balancing abilities, the need for leadership.  None of it was convincing.  This was one of the foundational  moments in my embracing anarchism.  The broken system was perpetuating itself, despite clear better alternatives.

i had a bit of the same feeling when i saw this video:

This design takes exactly the same footprint in terms of space and makes it better for bicycles and safer for car and bike interaction.  And why does this better design not happen?

Duke energy has announced it will not be building two new reactors at the Shearon Harris site in North Carolina after wasting $70 million on the ill conceived pipe dream.  Duke, which is the largest utility in the US, decided in February to shutter it’s idled Crystal River reactor both because it had one of the most expensive malfunctions in US history and because the utility was able to bilk rate payers for $1.6 billion for closing the plant.

Crystal River reactor – we make mistakes, you pay for them.

The organizers made a deal with the forces which control the weather.  “If you dont really need it to rain, it would be great if you could hold off until after the celebration”. With this deal struck, the rain remained at bay until after the circle was open.

assemble in the courtyard

Willow and Hawina before the ritual begins

Acorners are part of the event

The procession begins

We are at Ganas on our way to the Tarrytwon craft fair.  There are a number of things i appreciate about Ganas, and one of them is the bucket brigade food unloading line.

Stars join Ganasians to move food from truck to kitchen

On the surface this might appear quite mundane, just moving food from place to place.  But this is more like a complexly coordinated dance, where some participants need to opt out of heavier packages and people who are on top of it are always moving.

Stuff is picked up in a cargo van and unloaded by perhaps 20 people

But using this approach no single person is burdened for very long, there are lots of short treks and you can always extend your rest by stepping out of the queue or by taking on another job in the unload.  And there is a beautiful self correcting aspect to these lines where people move closer to each other or further apart depending on their enthusiasm and ability.

Willow and Hawina on Corson Ave on Staten Islamd

Reblogged from Well Behaved Women Rarely Make History:

Today brings another first in American gay history: NBA player Jason Collins comes out and becomes America's first openly gay and still-playing male major professional athlete.  I'm not really a sports girl, but this is a big deal and as a queer gal I'm grateful to Jason Collins for being brave enough to be the first.  I look forward to the day when this kind of an announcement is no big deal, and it's people like him who will help us get there.

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We are watching the political tide in this country turn. As recently as two years ago many thought it was unlikely the nation would legalize gay marriage, now most think it is all but inevitable. Collins is a privileged hero, but no less a hero. Angie caught some of what is great about this announcement in this post i am happily reblogging.

When I first heard about fracking, I knew it was bad. I just didn’t understand much beyond that.

Post-drilling tap water. A delightful chemical cocktail!

Then my friend Tom said something about getting payments from his parents’ land and a Natural Gas lease.  Yes, it turns out, they have signed a lease with the natural gas company allowing fracking on their land. Last night I watched the rivetting documentary Gasland, which is essentially Tom’s story. Living on the beautiful piece of land he grew up in in PA, one day Josh Fox (creator of Gasland) got a gas lease form in the mail. Curious, he started asking questions. Talking to people. Collecting samples of people’s tap water. Travelling to other fracking sites in the west and midwest.

And the story slowly comes together. Turns out its really quite simple. Ten years ago, 1% of our natural gas came from fracking. Today its 30%.